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UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 



THE 



SCHOOL QUESTION 

IN THE 

UNITED STATES. 



A CRITICAL EXAMINATION 



OF 



Dr. BOUQUILLON'S "Rejoinder to Critics." 



From the Civilta Cattolica, March 5, 1892. 



1892. 
FR. PUSTET, 

Printer to the Holy Apostolic See and the S. Congregation of Rites. 



FR. PUSTET & CO. 

NEW YORK and CINCINNATI. 



THE 



SCHOOL QUESTION 



IN THE 



UNITED STATES. 



BY 




MR 2 
REV. S. BRANDI, S.J. W?? 






Copyright, 1892, 

By ERWIN STEINBACK, 

Firm of Fr. Pustet & Co. 






- 



The School Question in the United States. 



A CRITICAL EXAMINATION 
of Dr. Bouquillon's ''Rejoinder to Critics." 

(From the Civilta Cattolica, March 5, 1892.) * 



In our first number for last January we published a brief criticism of 
Dr. Bouquillon's first pamphlet on the question of education. We did so 
both because we believed his teaching to be, on various points, false and 
dangerous, and because it seemed to us proper to defend the Civilta 
Cattolica, since our arguments in favor of the doctrine opposed by the 
distinguished Professor were pronounced by him to be " far from con- 
vincing, and very faulty." 

Our voice was not the only one raised in defence of the truth. 
Among those who have written against Dr. Bouquillon's pamphlet, may 
be mentioned Father R. I. Holaind, Professor of Ethics in the Jesuit 
Scholasticate at Woodstock, Md. ; 2 the Rt. Rev. Dr. Chatard, Bishop of 
Vincennes; 3 the Rev. E. A. Higgins, S.J., formerly Provincial of Mis- 
souri, a writer thoroughly conversant with questions of social science ; 4 
the Rev. S. G. Messmer, Bishop-elect of Green Bay and Professor of 
Canon Law in the same University in which Dr. Bouquillon holds a chair; 5 
the Rev. H. J. Heuser, Editor of the American Ecclesiastical Review, and 
Professor in the Theological Seminary of the Archdiocese of Philadelphia ; 8 
the Rev. J. Conway, S.J. of Canisius College, Buffalo, N. Y. , the author 
of several excellent works on Education ; 7 the critic of the American 

1 Education: to whom does it belong ? A Rejoinder to Critics. J. Murphy & Co. , 

2 The Parent First. Benziger, New York, 1891. 
Baltimore, 1892, p. 42. 

3 Dr. Bouquillon on the School Question. Amer. Eccl. Rev., Feb. 1892. 

4 Catholic News, New York; and Church Progress, St. Louis. 

5 The Right of Instruction. Anier. Eccl. Rev., ibid. p. in. 

6 Amer. Eccl. Rev., January and February, 1892. 

7 A Study of Dr. Bouquillon's pamphlet. Pustet, New York, 1882. 



— 4 — 

Catholic Quarterly Review (January, 1892), in a review of a treatise against 
compulsory education, written by Judge E. F. Dunne, a jurist of high 
reputation in the United States. x Moreover, several American and Euro- 
pean periodicals have published articles against the theories of Dr. Bou- 
quillon and in defence of the principles for which the Civilta Cattolica has 
been contending. 

It is not surprising that Dr. Bouquillon, finding himself arraigned by 
so many writers of name and reputation, and unwilling to admit that he 
was in the wrong, should have felt himself impelled to return to the con- 
test and to defend with new ardor what he ought never to have written 
at all. This he does in the "Rejoinder" which it is our purpose to re- 
view in these pages. In this second pamphlet he se:s forth his position, 
in a paragraph of modest dimensions, and then proceeds to clear up the 
disputed points in his teaching and to protest against the insinuations of 
some censors, who, with no slight foundation, gave out that he had written 
his pamphlet to serve the purposes of the liberal-catholic American school. 

The courteous tone with which the Professor begins the difficult task 
he has set himself in the "Rejoinder," is certainly commendable. If, in 
the heat of controversy, he sometimes deviates from the mild and moderate 
forms of speech with which he started, as, for example when he ascribes 
to his adversaries ignorance, prejudice, falsehood or dishonesty, we may 
condone this occasional acerbity of style when we consider the hard lot of 
the writer who is sorely strained in his defence of the false theories which 
he sincerely believes or, at all events, which he wishes to believe true. 
In such straits, as sophistry takes the place of argument, so passion holds 
sway where calm reasoning alone should prevail. 

To spare the patience of our readers, we shall limit our review to the 
principal points of the "Rejoinder," which, if our judgment is not at 
fault, give to the theories of the Reverend Professor a still more objection- 
able character than they had before. This is what we understand the 
author to hold : — 

The State — that is, any and every State — has the special and proper 
right, though not the exclusive right — 1) to educate the children of its 
citizens, that is, to establish schools for them, to appoint teachers, to 
prescribe methods and programmes of study; 2 — 2) to determine a mini- 
mum of instruction and make it obligatory; 3 — 3) to impose by law the 
teaching of any branch, the knowledge of which, considering the circum- 



1 Compulsory Education. St. Louis, 1891. 

2 Pamphlet, pp. 11, 12. Rejoinder, p. n. 
8 Pamphlet, p. 26. 



-^ 5 — 

stances, is deemed necessary to the majority of the citizens; 1 — 4) to 
punish parents who neglect to give to their children or to procure for 
them the instruction prescribed by the State ; 2 — 5) to exercise its authority 
in the matter of education not only over schools founded by the State, 
but equally over all schools of human science founded by individuals, 
families and associations ; 3 — 6) to exact from all teachers in such schools 
evidence of worth and capability. 4 

It must be observed, moreover, that, according to the Reverend 
Professor, the judge who is to decide upon the instruction obligatory 
on all, on the matter to be taught, on the methods and programmes 
to be followed and the qualifications required of the teachers in all the 
schools, is the State itself, whatever its character and polity may be, whether 
Protestant, infidel, or atheist. 

Keeping this statement of the case in mind, it is not hard to under- 
stand why the opponents of Dr. Bouquillon, as strenuous defenders of 
the rights of the Church and of the family, have promptly rejected his 
theories as pure and simple state-worship, 5 or as savoring of political 
rationalism, 6 or, at the best, even taking into account all the circum- 
stances of times and surroundings, as dangerous in the highest degree 
to the welfare of the Church, of the family, and even of civil society 
itself. What adds to the dangerous character of the Doctor's theories 
is the fact that, as we pointed out in our first review, 7 the author 
himself has no clear, certain and precise concept of education ; hence 
he uses the term with such a confusion and diversity of meanings that, 
in spite of the restrictions and explanations with which he surrounds 
it, the reader of his pamphlet might be justified in using one or another 
of his definitions, at will, and might draw therefrom a logical conclusion 
not only false, but such that even the most liberal of liberal Catholics 
would not venture to defend it. 

Neither in the original pamphlet nor in the "Rejoinder" has the 
word "education" any fixed and determined meaning. The author speaks 
of education now "in a restricted sense," again "in a large sense," at 
one time "in a certain sense," at another " in another sense ; " mostly, 

1 Pamphlet, p. 28. 

2 Ibid, pp. 26, 28. 

3 Ibid, p. 23. 

4 Ibid, p. 24. 

5 These theories are characterized as " statolatry " by M. Roussel, in the Univers, 
Jan. 30 and Feb. 7, 1892; and by the Osservatore Catto/ico, Feb. 4 and 5, 1892. 

6 La Verife, Quebec, Jan. 30, 1892. 

i Civilta Catlolica, Jan. 2, 1892, p. 87. 



6 — 



it seems to us, in no sense at all, and often against all sense, even 
common sense. Even reading cursorily the work of our author we have 
culled out about a score of such definitions. Here are some of them : 
What is education ? In a large sense it is to communicate what we 
know to one who does not know (p. 8); education in a restricted sense 
is to communicate after a methodical and continuous fashion knowledge 
relative to religion, morals, letters, sciences, the arts (p. 8) ; to educate 
is to instruct and train childhood and youth (p. 8) ; education, as far 
as the State is concerned, means the same as teaching, which is "estab- 
lishing schools, appointing teachers, prescribing methods and programmes 
of study" (p. n). This definition is repeated twice in the "Rejoinder," 
but with two variations. On page 30 we read : the right of education 
is the right "to establish schools, pay teachers, prescribe programmes;" 
and on the following page something else is brought into the definition 
of the right to educate, that is, to build schools, and the appointing or 
paying teachers is changed into "employ masters." The only definition 
that comes near to the truth is one which is given on page 16 of the 
"Rejoinder," where it is stated that education is "the formation of 
character, the inculcation of virtue, the correction of faults and defects." 
But it would be a dangerous concession to grant to any and every State 
the right to educate, if this definition were applied in the concession. 1 

But perhaps the Reverend Professor believed that he had anticipated 
our objection (in what sense we cannot surmise) when he wrote in the 
"Rejoinder" (p. 10) that "contentions merely about words are ridicu- 
lous." He then goes on to say : "In olden times such things flourished 
in Byzantium ; I did not expect to find them to-day in the free and fair 
land of America ! " 

1 This definition is given by Dr. Bouquillon to prove that every individual has the 
right to educate. We shall quote his argument as he lays it down himself (" Rejoinder, 
p. 16), as a sample of the lack both of clearness and precision in his ideas and of sound 
logic in the application of them. "Education is the formation of charater, the incul- 
cation of virtue, the correction of faults and effects." 

" But every man has the right to inculcate virtue on his neighbor, to correct his 
neighbor's faults." 

" Therefore (!) every individual has the right to educate." 

One need not have studied dialectics very deeply to understand that the Doctor's 
conclusion is a clear case of non sequitur. The syllogism contains four terms. The 
" formation of character " which appears in the major premise, is omitted in the minor. 
Had the Doctor taken care to propose his syllogism in fortn, he should have asserted in 
the minor premise that '■'■every individual has the right to form the character of his 
neighbor;" an assertion which his readers and admirers "in the free and fair land of 
America " would not readily have accepted. 



Evidently the Professor, when he left Europe, a few months more 
than two years ago, for the free land of America, had formed an alto- 
gether wrong notion of American liberty. It certainly does not consist 
in the unrestrained freedom of perverting ideas of which words are the 
signs. Such perversion has been and now is, as his Eminence Cardinal 
Gibbons well points out, "the source of the popular errors now existing 
in reference to education." 1 The same conviction is expressed by another 
distinguished prelate well known in the United States as one of the most 
learned members of the American hierarchy. The Rt. Rev. T. A. Becker, 
Bishop of Savannah, writing about this confusion of ideas, such as we 
have pointed out in Dr. Bouquillon's work, calls attention to the dangerous 
tendency of them, in these words: "Men who have studied logic. . . . 
will perceive that many honest thinkers are, by this vague, indefinite 
and interchanging use of the two terms {education and instruction) led to 
illogical results ; and these are the men who do harm in matters per- 
taining to the moral and intellectual domain." 2 

The question of education in the United States is not a Byzantine 
question, nor a mere matter of words. It is one of the most important 
questions with which American Catholics have to deal, because it touches 
most nearly the vital interests of that flourishing Church. On its solution, 
especially on its practical solution, depends the welfare, present and future, 
of millions and millions of souls. In this question of education, and we 
mean truly and thoroughly catholic education, we prefer to remain 
' * stationary, " that is, to stand unswervingly by the principle ' 'nil innovetur 
nisi quod traditum est." rather than admit of any compromise such as is 
suggested by Dr. Bouquillon on page 34 of his "Rejoinder." Such a 
compromise we believe to be fraught with danger, and moreover it would 
justify the Faribault bargain, 3 which means the closing of Catholic 
schools already existing, and the giving over of them to the State in order 
to save the outlay necessary for their maintenance ; and this arrangement 
provides for the exclusion from such schools of crucifixes, prayers and 
religion, gaining in return, from the State, secular instruction for catholic 
children, which instruction is given indifferently by teachers who are Pro- 
testants, or Jews, or unbelievers, appointed by the State ; and over this 
instruction the Church has absolutely no jurisdiction. We never have be- 
lieved and we never will believe that the teaching of Catholic religious and 

1 "I am persuaded that the popular errors now existing in reference to education 
spring from an incorrect notion of that term." Our Christian Heritage, p. 489. 

2 Secular Education. Amer. Cath. Quarterly Rev., Jan., 1892, p. 177. 

3 We have given an account of this transaction in our Correspondence from the U.S., 
issue of Feb. 6, 1892, p. 366. 



moral doctrine can be given as an appendix to the education of the 
Church's children, or that the real and not imaginary harm done to our 
Catholic children who, for months and years spend the greater part of the 
day in neutral schools, studying the histories and manuals of literature 
prescribed by the State, associating continually with a promiscuous assem- 
blage of boys, and often girls, who are Protestants or unbelievers, can ever 
be repaired by the half-hour of catechism which they may be allowed to 
have outside of school-hours, on certain days, or even if it were every day, in 
the week. * 

In confirmation of what we have just written, we may quote the 
words of the Rev. S. B. Smith, the first of American canonists : "Ex- 
perience teaches that the public or common schools in the United States, 
owing to their very system, .the text-books used, and the class of children 
frequenting them, in most cases endanger both the faith and morals of 
Catholic children sent to them." 2 And His Eminence, the Archbishop of 
Baltimore, classes among the serious evils which threaten American 
civilization, ' ' our mutilated and defective system of public school education. " 3 

It will be well not to pass over the 48th proposition of the Syllabus, 
condemned by Pius IX., which states that Catholics may approve of that 
manner of educating youth, which is disjoined from Catholic faith and 
from the authority of the Churchy and is concerned only with natural 
science, and which takes into account only, or at least primarily, the pur- 
poses of social life. 

But to return to the Reverend Professor. After speaking of the prin- 
ciples that govern education, which education, according to the Doctor, 
belongs "to the individual physical or moral, to the family, to the State, 



1 As early as December of last year, that is, three month after the Secularization of 
the Catholic schools, some forty pupils of the former parochial school of Faribault had 
been transferred, by the State officials, to other schools, where they receive secular in- 
structions from secular teachers. Meanwhile, in the schools built by Catholics for Cath- 
olics, no religious instruction is given, because it is forbidden by the State officials who 
have charge of the schools and on whose authority those schools now depend exclusively. 

2 Elements of Ecclesiastical Law, Vol. I, p. 442, 8th Ed., l89l. 

3 Our Christian Heritage, p. 489. 

4 The Secretary of the Faribault School-board, in a letter quoted by us in our Cor- 
respondence (p. 368), quoted above, declared that all superintendence and management 
of the school had passed entirely out of the hands of the hierarchy; and the Archbishop 
in whose diocese the school is situated, adds that "the authority (secular) of the Board is 
supreme in all that concerns the teaching prescribed by its own programme and during 
all the time fixed by the said programme." (Archbishop Ireland in the New York Herald, 
Dec. 14, 1891.) Vid. Civilta Cattolica, Feb. 6, p. 367 seq., and the Letter from the 
U. S. in the Correspondence in this number. 



— 9 — 

to the Church," he concludes, the "practical application (of these prin- 
ciples) is the work of the men whom God has placed at the head of the 
Church and the State." x We can understand how this practical and "har- 
monious" application may be made by the Church and the State, without 
any serious inconvenience or danger, when the State is in harmony and 
union with the Church. But the practical case would be and is very dif- 
ferent in countries where the State, atheistic, or Protestant, or altogether 
indifferent in religious matters, does not recognize the Church ; in other 
words, where, as in the United States, the State is separated from the 
Church. It is obvious that in such a case the practical application of 
those principles cannot have place, and in point of fact will not be made 
except by the State which alone will be the supreme judge, and that with- 
out appeal. 

If the Reverend Professor says that he will never approve of the abuse 
of these rights, should the State be guilty of abusing the rights he grants it, 
he should reflect that the State, say an atheistic, Protestant or unbelieving 
State, will make little account of his theoretical disapproval, just as it cares 
not one iota for the sacred and imprescriptible rights of the Church. 
These are my rights, the state will tell him, and I recognize no judge in 
the matter of their use other than myself. Such a State might fairly 
quote, in favor of its action, Dr. Bouquillon himself; for, in his "Re- 
joinder"' (page 13) he affirms that a State "where many religious beliefs 
prevail" — and a fortiori a State which is atheistic or irreligious — "may be 
inclined to waive the use of its rights in education, but it can never put those 
right* out of existence. " 

The reason why the State, whatever its character and polity may be, 
could never lose those rights, in Dr. Bouquillon's theory, is that the right 
of educating, as he wrongly teaches, belongs to the State as such ; just as 
it belongs to the family as such. Hence the Reverend Doctor declares 
most emphatically, in the "Rejoinder" (pp. 11, 14) that in this matter of 
education he admits no distinction between "the State Christian and the 
State non-Christian, because 1) it is unfounded, and 2) it implies that the 
government of the United States is not Christian, an assumption which 
I regard," he says, "as untrue in its full extent." Upon this we must ask 
leave of the Reverend Professor to make a passing remark. He is a theo- 
logian, and he assures us ("Rejoinder," p. 33) that he has "gone to the 
school of Franzelin, Pattrizzi and Ballerini, S.J." Now we would ask 
him whether he learned in that school that a State which professes absolute 
indifferentism in religious matters, which officially declines to recognize 

1 The original pamphlet, p. 31. 



— 10 — 

any faith, which, in its schools, does not admit the Sacred scriptures 
as a book containing a divine and supernatural revelation, is a 
Christian State? In that. school, which is ours too, the teaching was then, 
as it is now, that " Extra catholicismum non datur verus christianismus." * 
We may add that the theory of the rights of the State in matter of educa- 
tion, in the sense in which it is now defended by the author of the 
pamphlet we are reviewing, is altogether at variance with the teaching of 
that school. We must believe then, that elsewhere, and not in that school, 
he learned the theories he is now propounding. We would have it under- 
stood that we are dealing with the opinions which he has set forth in his 
first pamphlet, and which he is now striving to defend in his "Rejoinder"; 
for we do not at all admit the truth of his assertion (" Rejoinder," p. 6), 
that "the doctrine exposed in the pamphlet. ... is substantially contained 
in the treatise De Legibus of the Theologia Fundamentalis " ! In that treat- 
ise (n. 205) we read the following words : "Ad auctoritatem civilem 
pertinet providere institutioni in litteris, scientiis et artibus humanis, quae 
tantopere necessariae sunt turn singulis individuis turn toti communitati .... 
ne tamen ultra suos limites extendatur, animadvertendum est, societatis 
civilis finem non esse ut praedicta, bona omnia immediate civibus procuret, 
sed potius ut eos ad ilia comparanda adjuvet." Here we recognize sound 
doctrine ; this is the doctrine of our school, which has been clearly ex- 
pressed by our colleague, the Rev. Father Taparelli. "Civil society has 
no right, in the regular order of things, to arrogate to itself the direction 
of private education. I say, to arrogate to itself — because the State may / 
open to its youth the safe and wholesome sources from which they may 
learn what is true and right ; it may provide parents, for this same end, I 
with a true and faithful helper in whom their confidence may be assured 
by public guarantees, provided always it claims no right to compel them 
to use these helps. This is not arrogating to itself the right to educate ; 
it is simply offering helpful means towards obtaining education, and it is a 
most just and praiseworthy proceeding in a progressive society." 2 

Certainly, from this doctrine to that which Dr. Bouquillon defends 
in his pamphlet, is a far cry. For in the "Theologia Fundamentalis" 
the providere institutioni in human knowleflge^ letters, sciences and arts, 
did not mean that the State has either the right or the duty to furnish 
these advantages to its citizens immediately, but only to help the citizens 
to the attainment of them; but in the "Rejoinder" (p. 32) that same 
providere institutioni "means not only to aid and. encourage others in 

1 Vide Perrone, De Vera Religione, p. 2, n. 88. Marietti, 1865. 

2 Saggio teoretico, Vol. 2, n. 1570. 




II 



*s> the giving-ef such instruction, but to give instruction directly," that is, 
to-educate the children of its .citizens. What he refused to the State in 
1887 "ne ultra suos limites extendatur," he- now grants to the same 
State as a natural and divine right which the State can never lose how- 
ever much the State may abuse it ! 

Metastasio must have been thinking of something like this when 
he wrote : 

" Dopo un error commesso, 
Necessario diventa ogni altro eccesso. " 

It was our purpose to say something more about the Doctor's present 
teaching about compulsory education, which doctrine was dispatched by 
him in five lines, two in the text and three in a note, in his "Theologia 
Fundamentals ;" but we have been made 'acquainted, by our American 
correspondent, with a letter written by Dr. Bouquillon, in which he 
announces his intention of publishing, at an early date, a reply to our 
criticism of his theories on this point, which we gave to our readers in 
our issue of January 2d. We think it right to defer any further treat- 
ment of the subject till we shall have read this other "Rejoinder," if 
it appears. Meanwhile we deem it lawful for us to give our honest 
opinion concerning the authors quoted by Dr. Bouquillon in. support 
of his thesis. 

"The State — that is, any and every. State — has the special and proper 
right to educate." The authors quoted as patrons of this thesis are his 
Eminence Cardinal Zigliara, Monsignor Sauve, and Fathers Hammerstein 
and Costa-Rosetti, S.J. Now we have most carefully and diligently 
conned and pondered the passages quoted by Dr. Bouquillon ; we have 
gone to the original writings themselves, and after a deep and accurate 
investigation we are constrained, on behalf of the truth and in justice'' 
to those illustrious writers, to declare that not one of them grants to the 
State — that is, to any and every State — the proper and special right to 
educate, not even in the sense in which Dr. Bouquillon explains the 
meaning of those words — namely, "to establish schools, to appoint 
teachers, to prescribe methods and programmes of study." Not only is this 
doctrine not found in any one of the passages quoted by Dr. Bouquillon, 
but it is distinctly excluded by the whole context. As an example, we 
will quote the context of his Eminence Cardinal Zigliara, whose great 
and uncontested authority in matters of theology and philosophy Dr. 
Bouquillon has' so sadly misused. 

According to Dr. Bouquillon, the State has the right to educate, 
and of this right the principal element is the "prescribing methods and 



12 

programmes of study." x Now Cardinal Zigliara, in his "Summa Philo- 
sophica" v. 3, 1. 2, c. 4, a. 3, explicitly denies that the State has any such 
right." Addo Ecclesiae competere jus seligendi magistros, designandi 
scholas, praescribendi methodos et doctrinas suis subditis quod jus statui 
denegavimus. " 

Dr. Bouquillon undertakes to prove that the State has the right to 
educate, because "civil authority has the right to use all legitimate tem- 
poral means it judges necessary for the attainment of its end." But this 
reason is rejected by Cardinal Zigliara as a sophism: "Si haec ratio, quam 
ad nauseam usque adversarii decantant valeret, nimis probaret; siquidem 
nullus est actus externus civis, qui aliquam externam relationem ad civi- 
lem societatem non habeat; ergo in sensu objectionis, societas civilis, prae- 
textu boni communis, de omnibus actibus externis hominis, considerando 
ea ut bona quaedam socialia, disponere posset. Hoc est, non homines, 
sed pecudes essent homines in societate viventes " (ibid. 1. 2, c. 1, a. 5). 

Observe, moreover, that according to Dr. Bouquillon's theory, men- 
tioned above, the State has the right, not only of helping parents to fulfil 
their duty in the education of their children and of exercising due watch- 
fulness to keep this education within the bounds of truth and right, but 
also of constituting itself the educator of the offspring of its citizens, of 
determining the minimum of instruction to be given to all and of making 
this obligatory, of prescribing by law the teaching of any branch it may 
judge necessary, etc. Cardinal Zigliara, on the other hand, takes quite the 
opposite view. With that clearness and precision which is one of the many 
charms of his philosophical teaching, he enumerates and determines the 
rights that may be granted to the State. They are 1) Jus simul et omcium 
procurandi (familiis) media aptiora ad educationem turn intellectualem turn 
moralem — 2) Jus et omcium invigilandi ut educatio intellectualis et mora- 
lis intra limites honestatis et veritatis contineatur." And as if this were 
not definite enough, he adds the emphatic declaration: "his (duobus) 
libenter concessis, imo ex jure impositis Statui, caetera, quae sibi arrogat, 
vehementer negamus; " and in a note, after repeating that the State has no 
other rights, in this matter, than the two above-mentioned, he goes on to 
say: " en limites societatis civilis, quos nonnisi contra sacra jura paterna 
excedere fas est." 

1 To establish or build schools, to pay, employ or even appoint teachers, without 
obliging parents to use them, is not to educate, but only, as Card. Zigliara explains, to 
furnish the parents with means of promoting education, whether intellectual or moral, or, 
as Taparelli has it, it "is offering helpful means towards obtaining education; a most just 
and praiseworthy proceeding in a progressive society." 



— 13 — 

• 

We were amazed, therefore, when we read the "Rejoinder," to find 
that Dr. Bouquillon persisted in his misinterpretation of Cardinal Ziglia- 
ra's teaching, to say nothing of his charging with ignorance and falsehood 
a distinguished American writer who incurred his displeasure by asserting 
and proving, just as we have asserted and proved, that the learned Cardi- 
nal is so far from favoring Dr. Bouquillon's thesis that he is one of its 
strongest opponents. As we deem it important that no shadow of doubt 
on this point should remain in the minds of our readers, we have taken 
the liberty of calling upon his Eminence in person, to make sure of our 
statement. He has very kindly authorized us to declare that he does not 
admit the doctrine that "the State, that is, any and every State, has the 
right to educate the children of its citizens." 

We close this article with a solemn protest against some words used 
by Dr. Bouquillon on the 8th page of his "Rejoinder," as follows: "Fre- 
quent use has been made of Mgr. Cavagnis, not only because of the in- 
trinsic worth of his writings, but also because of his special position. He 
is a member of the Sacred Congregation of extraordinary ecclesiastical 
affairs and Professor in the Pontifical Seminary of the Apollinare. May 
we not repeat in America what is taught in the Seminary of the Pope himself 
and is published in Rome P" 

If these words mean anything they mean that these theories now 
proposed by Dr. Bouquillon in America are the theories of Mgr. Cavagnis, 
taught in the Pope's seminary and contained in the Institutiones published 
in Rome. If this is not the meaning of his words, what does the Professor 
mean by asserting, in defence of his theories, that he does but repeat in 
America what is taught and published in Rome? 

Now it is our duty to declare that Dr. Bouquillon's assertion is 
absolutely and entirely false. Dr. Bouquillon's theories are not taught in 
the Pope's seminary, and they are not found in the work of Mgr. Cavagnis 
published in Rome. • 

We have enquired, by letter, of Mgr. Cavagnis whether the doctrine 
set forth on page 554 1 of this number of our Review (the author's name 
we did not mention) was to be found in the " Institutiones Jur. Pub. 
Ecclesiastici " published by him in Rome in 1883, and whether he taught 
any such doctrine in the Roman Pontifical Seminary of the Apollinare. 
To this enquiry he has sent us the following reply : — 

1 The propositions mentioned here are found on page 4 of this pamphlet. 



— 14 — 

Roman Pontifical Seminary, 

Rome, February 21st, 1892. 
Rev. Father in Christ : — 

In answer to your letter of the 15th inst, I declare to you that in my 
Institutiones I do not directly treat of public natural right, but only of 
ecclesiastical law, and consequently I have in that work written rather 
fully about the rights of the Church concerning education and schools. 
But I have never treated of a proper and special right that could belong 
to the-State, that is, to any and every State, of educating its citizens, nor 
have I treated the question whether and how the State may render obliga- 
tory a certain measure of instruction. I deem it hardly necessary to add 
that the doctrine which your Reverence mentions in the letter sent to me, 
is not taught in this Pontifical Seminary. 

I am, &c, 

Felice Cavagnis. 

We may stop here. There are many other things that we would like 
to say ; but we will hold them in reserve for another article which we may 
give to our readers as soon as we shall have received Dr. Bouquillon's 
rejoinder to the Civilta Cattolica. Meanwhile we take this opportunity to 
thank him for the words in which he expresses his confidence in our judg- 
ment to which ("Rejoinder" p. 6 note) he refers "those who should be 
tempted to suspect his orthodoxy." 



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